A Regular Commentary on Strategic Affairs from a Leading Commentator and Analyst
2018 book project: Little Europe? Twenty-First Century Strategy for Declining Powers

hms iron duke

Monday, 25 April 2016

America Needs a Unity Europe, Mr President

Alphen, Netherlands. 24 April. To
save the EU on Friday last President Obama finally ended what Winston Churchill
first dubbed the Special Relationship (big ‘S’, big ‘R’). And yet the president offered no American
view of the future of Europe. Indeed, what was striking about Friday’s
carefully-staged Obama-Cameron (in that order) press conference in the utterly
inappropriate Locarno Room of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was just how
‘unspecial’ the Special Relationship has become. Rather, the world witnessed a
lame duck president telling the facts of power life to (and for) a lame duck
prime minister about the future of what Washington clearly regards as a lame
duck power in what has become a dangerously lame duck institution. Why?

First, President Obama repeated the
enduring American misunderstanding about European history. For many in the
Washington elite there were no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Europeans in the past. Neither
World War One nor World War Two were struggles between good and evil, democracy
and totalitarianism. They were European ‘civil’ wars for which and in which all
Europeans were responsible for the price America had to pay to ‘save’ said
Europeans from themselves.

Second, President Obama repeated the
enduring American elite obsession with a united states of Europe. Ever since
Jean Monnet seduced US Secretary of State and uber-grandee John Foster Dulles
the Washington elite, both left and right, have by and large bought into the
silly notion that a US of E would one day emerge in the image of the US of A. Moreover,
many still believe a federal Europe would share the American world view and be
supportive of it. Wrong on both counts.

Third, President Obama reflected
Washington’s dislike of anyone challenging the mistaken American view of ‘Europe’.
Far from being America’s closest ally in Europe Britain has become one of its
biggest irritants. This is why the president so belittled Britain, its people
and its role in the world. It is also why the Americans last week compared
Britain’s relationship with Brussels with that of North Dakota to Washington.
The simple fact that Britain is the world’s fifth largest economy and a top
five world military power was simply brushed aside. The only special
relationship (small ‘s’, small ‘r’) that exists is between America and Germany precisely
because it is founded on power.

At the beginning of this blog I
referred to the inappropriateness of holding the Obama-Cameron press conference
in the FCO’s Locarno Room. The 1925 Treaty of Locarno allowed Germany to join
the League of Nations as part of the then hope that laws and institutions could
replace power and force in the affairs of Europe. President Obama and the fawning
David Cameron hoped this would send a signal about the continued need for such
institutions and the ‘laws’ they spawn in Europe.

The political sentiment is of course
right. However, law without power are, as Hobbes had it, “covenants without the
sword” and doomed to fail. In 1936 Adolf Hitler destroyed that hope when he
marched German forces into the Rhineland. The Obama administration seems like
many on this side of the pond to also believe that if ‘laws’ are just and institutions
effective then there will be little need for power and force. Sadly, law must
be reinforced by sanction and institutions can only be effective if they are
seen by the people as legitimate. At no point during his visit did President
Obama address the crucial dilemmas of power, legitimacy and efficiency facing
contemporary Europe.

The paradox of contemporary US
policy is that the blind commitment of the White House and much of Washington to
the failed Monnet-Dulles ‘vision’ of Europe is also preventing Europe recover
from its strategic slough. If Europe is to recover from the self-engineered Eurozone
crisis and the Schengen-exaggerated migration crisis, and if Europeans are to again
reinvest in the defence of their own continent, what is needed is not more
fantasy federal Europe, but a realist Europe built on a close super-alliance of
Europe’s nation-states. In other words, Europeans need a unity Europe, not a united Europe.

The clear failure of President
Obama to understand that simple distinction was perhaps for me the most
striking failure of his London remarks. It also reinforced the paradox of this
most paradoxical of Obama’s visits to Britain. Yes, there are unthinking
Brexiteers who can be described as parochial, nostalgic little Englanders.
Indeed, Cameron is trying to paint all Brexiteers as such. However, there are
also serious, heavyweight thinking Brexiteers who like me understand the real
problem; this ‘Europe’, i.e. this EU, simply does not work. It is not democratic
enough, and will never generate either sufficient wealth or sufficient security
precisely because of its very self. Critically, unless the link between people
and governance is restored by putting the member-states firmly back at the
centre of the European Project the EU will never become a power partner of the
United States in the world.

My view is not peculiar to
Britain or indeed myself. Indeed, it is a view now held by millions of
Europeans. Therefore, the strategic task now at hand is to step back from the
dead-end of a united Europe and to create in its stead a functioning unity
Europe, without as the Americans fear the collapse of the whole edifice of
‘Europe’. However, the failure of President Obama to a) recognise Europe’s contemporary
reality; and b) commit to helping Britain achieve such a realist reality was perhaps
the greatest failure of vision in Obama’s London remarks. Certainly, the implicit
suggestion by President Obama that the EU represents the status quo will soon
prove to be utterly misplaced.

My on balance judgement is that
Britain should remain within the EU at this tipping point in its affairs and
help fix it. However, it will be very hard to ‘fix’ the EU if Washington
remains fixated on a fantasy federal Europe. The future of Europe is a unity
Europe, not a united states of Europe and both America and Britain must help
create it. However, to succeed Washington must first understand the limits of
‘Europe’, and London must relearn how to wield power.

You insulted me last week, Mr President.
Not because you insulted my country because on the issue of British weakness I
think you have a point. No, Mr President, you insulted my intelligence by
trying to reduce all the fundamental issues of democracy and governance implicit
in the Brexit debate down to a simple issue of trade. Somehow I thought you
were bigger than that. Silly me. No matter, Mr President. After all, I am a
mere European citizen and my views count for nothing.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.